Books for Educators

Classics:

• The 31 most influential classic books in education – a crowd-sourced list

Top 5:

• Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Educationby David N. Perkins - Comment
  • Interview - David Perkins on Making Learning Whole (1 hour - Elluminate Link)
  • Related Post - Autonomy and the need to back off by design as teachers
• Three Strands in the Braid: A Guide for Enablers of Learning by Paula Underwood
• A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Changeby Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown
  • Related videos
    • Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production (10 minutes)
    • Lecture on Learning in the Digital Age (1 hour)
• Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communitiesby Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, & John D Smith
  • Blog
  • Interview of Nancy White by Steve Hargadon
  • Wiki
• Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print by J. David Bolter

Five More:

• The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins
• Improving Student Thinking: A Comprehensive Approach by Barry K. Beyer
• Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Essential Characteristics for Successedited by Costa & Kallick
  • The Institute for Habits of Mind
  • Overview of the 16 Habits of Mind
• Mindest by Carol Dweck
  • Interviews from her Brainology site
  • Tech Nation interview
• The Understanding by Design Guide to Creating High-Quality Unitsby Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
  • Grant Wiggins' blog

Recent:

• Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Libow Martinez & Gary Stager
• Decisive by Chip and Dan Heath
• The Self-Directed Learning Handbook: Challenging Adolescent Students to Excel by Maurice Gibbons
• Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Ageby Steven Johnson
  • Authors@Google: Steven Johnson
• Makers: The New Industrial Revolutionby Chris Anderson
  • Authors@Google: Chris Anderson
• Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer (Guess he got too creative while writing this one.)
• Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learnby Cathy Davidson
  • Interviews from Cathy Davidson's site
• Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
• Stop Stealing Dreams by Seth Godin

Others:

• 21st Century Skills by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel
• The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computerby Seymour Papert
  • Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas
• Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn, & Curtis Johnson
• Driveby Daniel Pink
  • RSA Animation
• Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
• Infusing Critical and Creative Thinking into Content Instruction: A Lesson Design Handbook for the Elementary Grades by Robert J. Swartz and Sandra Parks
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
• Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reformby David Tyack & Larry Cuban
  • Why School Reform Is Impossible by Seymour Papert
• Visual Tools for Constructing Knowledge by David Hyerle
• Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
  • Video Overview
  • Authors@Google presents Steven Johnson: "Where Good Ideas Come From"

To Read:

• Net Smartby Howard Rheingold
  • Syllabus